


Incalculable, Unconditional

by SublimeDiscordance



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Cherno Alpha - Freeform, Crimson Typhoon - Freeform, Discussion of Canon Events, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Fluff, Gipsy Danger - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Incest, Lucky Seven - Freeform, M/M, Minor Character Death, Multi, Original Jaeger - Freeform, Romance, Sentient Jaegers, Sibling Incest, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Striker Eureka - Freeform, Tron: Legacy crossover, lame attempts at humor, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-14
Updated: 2014-06-14
Packaged: 2018-02-04 14:42:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1782685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SublimeDiscordance/pseuds/SublimeDiscordance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chuck Hansen and Sam Flynn meet at Kodiak Island and are assigned together. It works out better than one might expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Incalculable, Unconditional

**Author's Note:**

> This story is being posted as a part of the Pacific Rim Mini Bang 2014. 
> 
> Many thanks to my artist, [roguepythia](http://roguepythia.tumblr.com) (also known as Sharvie) for her work making [a fantastic vid](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1786009) for this piece. She designed it as a trailer of sorts, so the recommendation is to watch it before you read.
> 
> This story is only a loose crossover with Tron: Legacy. The majority of the world comes from Pacific Rim (or, rather, they're assumed to be the same world but we only spend a lot of time in the settings and events of Pacific Rim). As such, I believe there are only two references in this story that will _potentially_ go over readers' heads if they haven't seen Tron: Legacy. 
> 
> Unbeta'd, so any mistakes or eccentricities are my own.

The first time Chuck meets Sam Flynn, it’s when the new recruits for the PPDC are all gathered together in the receiving bay, listening to a speech being given by Kaori Jessop. Recently, she’s become the new Marshall at the Academy after she and her husband were dismissed from the program; medical reasons, the official report had said.

She's telling them, in precise, accented English, that the Kaiju are getting bigger and tougher, and so they need to have pilots who are bigger, better—larger than life. It's nothing Chuck doesn't know already, and he lets his gaze shift, taking in the men and women around him; pushovers, the lot of them, he can already tell.

“Excuse me,” says a soft voice from behind him, “aren’t you a little young to be here?”

Chuck whirls towards the source of the voice, anger rising in his stomach, harsh words rising on his lips, because, _really_ , he does _not_ need this shit from yet _another_ person, and—

And the retort dies in his throat because the unnaturally-pale, black-haired woman who’d asked has such an earnest, _curious_ expression in her eyes.

Her equally unnatural _silver_ eyes.

Chuck stares for a moment before a man—a fucking _gorgeous_ man, if Chuck is being honest with himself—sidles up behind her, placing a hand on her shoulder.

“Quorra,” he admonishes softly, accent obviously American, “it’s not polite to ask people things like that.”

The woman—Quorra, and who the hell names their kid something like that?—gets a horrified look on her face, features pinching into a frown as her eyes widen incrementally.

“Oh, I apologize,” she says quickly. “I didn’t mean any offense, I promise, I’m—” she breaks off, looking away before continuing, not quite meeting Chuck’s gaze, “I suppose you could say that I’m a bit new at this whole thing.”

“I’m sorry,” the man adds, “I know it’s none of our business, so…”

As he trails off, Chuck wants to say that, yeah, it is none of their business, that they don’t know him or what his life’s been like so he would very much appreciate them keeping their noses in their _own_ damn business. However, the silver-eyed woman looks so damn upset at the prospect of having upset him that Chuck just waves his hand as if to wipe the whole thing out of the way.

“S’alright,” is what he says, blinking at them both, lips thinning. The curiosity is still there in her eyes, he can see it; now, it’s simply restrained. This Quorra, whoever she is, is not good at hiding her emotions. The way she smiles quickly at the man who is now at her side, tugging her away from the redhead, reminds him almost of a child. However, before they get too far away, the man looks back at Chuck as Quorra is chatting animatedly at him and mouths a silent “Sorry” in his direction.

Chuck simply shrugs, as if to say that it’s alright, or that he doesn’t care; possibly both. He returns his attention to Marshall Jessop, more interested in what she has to say than any weird-ass seppos, anyway.

 

——

 

The second time Chuck meets Sam Flynn, it’s a complete accident.

They’re a week into their first round of training: physical testing. Weeding out the weak, as Chuck likes to call it when Herc bothers to call—though, more likely than not, it’ll be his uncle Scott calling instead of his father. Over half of his class have already dropped out or been sent home, and Chuck aches from the number of exercises they’ve been through in the past twenty four hours alone.

He’s on his way to the mess to grab dinner, knuckling as his eyes to stave off the exhaustion creeping into his bones at the ridiculous hours they’re being forced to keep, when something hard collides with his side. Hands land on his shoulder and arm and steady him.

“Jeeze, man, I’m really sorry,” says an all-too-familiar voice. “You okay—hey! You’re that kid from when we first got here!”

Chuck turns his head and glares halfheartedly. In truth, he’s too tired to do more than that at the moment.

“Yeah, mate, what’s it to you?”

The smile that meets him is blinding and full of teeth, although there’s a kind of genuine warmth to it that makes Chuck think that maybe, just maybe, this man simply smiles like this all the time, and it’s not some facsimile he’s forcing himself to wear.

“Oh, nothing, just uh,” he looks away and down, the same way Quorra does, and the way the two of them are so obviously fucking perfectly matched makes Chuck want to gag, “I wanted to apologize about what Quorra said again. For real this time. She’s, well, like she said, she’s kinda new to this interpersonal stuff, so she sometimes speaks without really thinking, and I’m just…” he trails off, shoulders lifting in a tense, slightly helpless shrug. “I’m sorry, I guess.”

Chuck casts a pointed look at the hands that are still on him, and the other man removes them almost immediately—he does _not_ miss their warmth; no, that would be fucking stupid and sentimental—before he looks down at one and then sticks it out towards the Australian.

“We never really got formally introduced,” he says, still smiling. “I’m Sam. Sam Flynn.”

Chuck’s halfway through tiredly shaking the man’s hand, a soft, “Chuck,” slipping from his lips, doing so if only to get the American to shut up and let him go eat his food in peace, when the name penetrates the fog of sleep deprivation and resonates off of something in his brain.

“Wait, Sam Flynn? As in, _the_ Sam Flynn?”

Something in Sam’s eyes closes off at the words, the corners of his lips pulling themselves together as his mouth thins and he nods. Chuck is acutely aware of the fact that he’s said something wrong, but he’s not sure what exactly it is. However, instead of worrying over it, he just says the first thing that comes to mind.

“Huh. I imagined you’d be taller,” he deadpans with a shrug. “Or at the very least, I dunno,” he gestures at Sam, “more ‘I own the biggest software company in the world’ and less…” his gesticulations increase in fervor as his voice remains flat, “ _this_ , I guess. Mostly taller, though.”

They stand in tense silence for a few moments before Sam finally cracks a smile, wrapping an arm around Chuck’s shoulders and ruffling his hair, which gets an irritated squawk out of the redhead.

“Says the shorty,” Sam teases him, which just makes Chuck punch him in the ribs.

“Ow!” the older man laughs, pulling away and rubbing at his side; Chuck hadn’t exactly pulled the punch, but he’d felt the solid weight of the brunet’s body under his shirt when his fist had made contact, so he’s fairly certain it hadn’t hurt that bad. “Buy a guy dinner first, why don’t you. Or, at the very least, tell him your whole name.”

Chuck’s eyes roll themselves almost of their own accord as his hands card through his hair, taming any strands that might now be sticking up at an odd angle thanks to the other man.

“Hansen,” he says simply. “Chuck Hansen.”

Sam seems to recognize the name and brightens immediately—of course he does, Chuck thinks ruefully to himself.

“Huh. You’re Herc’s kid? I expected you to be,” his eyes travel over Chuck’s stocky five-foot eleven frame, and his brows furrow ever so slightly, “I would’ve expected you to be shorter, actually. I thought you were, like, a kid or something.”

“‘M not a kid,” Chuck protests, “just turned sixteen.”

There’s a moment of silence during which Sam just stares at him, blinking. Then,

“You’re _joking_ , right?”

When Chuck just stares back, the older man elaborates.

“You look like you could pass for twenty. Well,” he amends, “maybe, if not for that baby face of yours.”

Chuck punches him again. Harder, this time.

Sam just laughs, _again_ —though he definitely winces, a small victory in Chuck’s mind—before he puts his arm back around Chuck’s shoulder and steers them towards the mess, rambling about how he’d been one of the people who designed Lucky Seven’s operating and synapse systems.

Chuck pretends to be bored, though that doesn’t seem to deter the other man in the slightest.

 

——

 

After that, Chuck stops counting the number of times he sees Sam. They seem to run into each other everywhere, Sam almost always accompanied by Quorra. Chuck can’t really get over her eyes, though: their metallic sheen and unnatural color. They freak him out.

However, he never asks, and the other two never offer.

 

——

 

Two months later—because, god, they really are rushing people through this shit now, aren’t they?—finds Chuck in the Kwoon, facing off against various opponents for drift compatibility trials. Currently, he’s facing a girl who looks no older than eighteen, but who fights like a champion marshal artist. She weaves around him, tripping him up, and getting the requisite four hits in before he can even think to challenge her. When their instructor tells them to go again—after all, she’s the first person who’s actually been able to _beat_ Chuck—the redhead snorts and decides, to hell with it, and goes on the offensive first. He smashes through all her carefully crafted defenses and returns the favor from before, scoring four hits of his own in seconds.

A third trial goes much the same.

“Alright, Lannister, take a spot,” the Kwoon master says, shaking her head in disapproval. “Next up, Flynn. Get your ass out here, pretty boy.”

Chuck can’t help the grin that breaks out on his face at the nickname—something he’d taken to calling Sam after they’d known each other for about two weeks, and that the instructors had all picked up from him—and at the way Sam is totally blushing. Even after nearly eight weeks of friendship, Chuck is amazed at how easy it is to get under the older man’s skin.

“I still totally hate you for that, Hansen,” Sam tells him loudly, taking hold of the hanbo the instructor offers him. His grin betrays the truth behind his words, though.

“Yeah, yeah, keep talking, old man,” Chuck laughs, grasping his weapon tightly. The signal comes from the instructor, and then Sam’s coming at him.

In truth, Chuck has been waiting for this matchup. He’s seen Sam fight before. The older man works in much the same way Chuck does, charging in with minimal planning and ruthlessly exploiting any holes he finds. Or, failing that, he’ll make one. However, where Chuck is liable to just punch an opening into existence, Sam will trick a chink into widening. So, really, it’s a race to see which happens first, in Chuck’s mind: Sam breaks, or Chuck slips up.

He deflects the first series of blows with contemptuous ease and follows up with some of his own, rolling when Sam sweeps his feet from under him and coming back up swinging. The older man clearly hadn’t expected that, because he takes a single step back, which is all Chuck needs. He pushes, driving Sam to the other side of the mat, and then his hanbo is hovering under Sam’s chin. Chuck grins, elated at taking this man down a few pegs, but then catches sight of the sly smile on Sam’s face as well. Looking down, he sees that Sam’s staff is an inch from his exposed ribs.

Chuck growls and steps back. They circle each other this time, warier, before, with a cry, Chuck loses his patience and attacks.

The match goes on for another eight minutes, both of them standing their ground for the most part, dodging, deflecting, jumping, and swinging at each other. At the eight minute mark, they don’t stop because the instructor tells them to, but because Chuck brings his staff down in an overhanded swing, and Sam catches the blow on the middle of his own.

There’s a horrifyingly loud snap as Sam’s weapon splits in half and Chuck’s cracks, bending but not quite breaking.

They both throw the now-useless pieces of wood to the side as one and engage using their hands. And it is in this moment, the younger man deflecting a punch to the side that had been intended for his head as he sweeps a leg outward from which Sam effortlessly skirts back, that Chuck realizes something.

He can _feel_ Sam, can predict what the other man is about to do based on the way the muscles under his skin tense before he starts moving; can tell exactly how he’s going to block and then counter it. Except, Sam is doing the same thing, and he counters Chuck’s counters to _his_ counters almost effortlessly. Limbs tangle, and one of them trips and the fight moves to the floor.

The Kwoon master stops them and pronounces them both drift compatible.

“Now get out of my Kwoon,” she utters to them, words filled with something Chuck can’t identify, “and get your asses to the simulators.”

Chuck doesn’t miss the look that Sam sends his way at the words, equal parts hopeful and… something else. Trepidation? He also doesn’t miss the look Quorra is sending their way.

“Hey, man,” Sam says, pulling Chuck’s attention back to that ridiculous, dimpled smile as an arm is swung over his shoulders, “good match.”

The arm thing is something the older man just _does_ , Chuck has noticed, and he kind of loves it and kind of hates it. It sends a warm thrill rushing through his belly, and he’s not sure whether the love or hate stems from that feeling. Probably both, if he’s honest with himself.

“Yeah, you too, I guess,” Chuck admits gruffly, not quite meeting Sam’s eyes. The words earn him an annoyed eyeroll and a single corner of the older man’s mouth lifting.

“Right then, well, I figure we both reek, so what do you say to a shower before we go stink up the sims?”

Chuck has to blink for a moment before asking, perhaps more loudly that is absolutely necessary, “What, like together?”

Sam laughs at him; Chuck wonders why Sam seems to be the only one who finds him funny.

“Sure, kid, if that’s what you want. After all, we’re gonna be in each other’s heads soon, so, not really like there’ll be any secrets or anything. _But_ ,” his expression turns serious in no time at all, “no touching, alright? I know what your dad is like, and I’d rather keep my head attached to my shoulders.”

Chuck tries to punch him. Sam dodges the blow with a smirk.

 

——

 

They end up taking separate showers. However, by the time Chuck’s taken one in his own quarters, he still hasn’t heard from Sam, so he goes and knocks on the other man’s door.

Sam answers said door several moments later wearing nothing but a towel, hair dripping. Chuck has to physically restrain himself from staring and drooling like a damned dog, because, wow, he hadn’t expected some billionaire kid to be that built; then again, to make it through the program, he supposes he’d have to be.

“Come on in,” the brunet says by way of greeting, grin firmly in place. “I’m just about ready.”

“Just about ready,” as it turns out, translates to still needing to dry off and get dressed. Chuck’s sure his heart almost stops when Sam turns back towards his dresser and drops his towel, his perfectly sculpted ass on full display.

Chuck nearly groans in frustration, wondering if it’s possible to die from getting hard too quickly.

 

——

 

Their first drift goes far better than Chuck had originally imagined.

Snippets of their lives fly past, perceptions blurring until it’s all one giant mishmash of _sensation_.

_A young boy in his father’s arms, watching in tear-soaked horror as a miniature sun blossoms on the horizon._

_Another boy, this one younger than the first, asking why mommy isn’t coming home._

_An older couple, a man and a woman, telling that same boy that his father isn’t coming home, either._

_Clinging to his father’s leg as his mother stands nearby, video camera in hand, laughing as the older man tries to pry him off with a smile._

_A world of blue and red and lights and death, blood dripping down his sleeve onto the—_

_“First game’s on me—”_

_“Dad? Where’s mum? What’s happeni—”_

_“Made it.”_

_“Why d’you and Uncle Scott get to save the world but I’m not bloody allowed to even tr—”_

_“He’s my_ son _.”_

The rest comes in rush as they delve deeper, further than he ever thought possible, opening himself up to this man he’d only met a few months ago, and Chuck feels Sam opening his mind in much the same way.

“Neural handshake at 100%,” comes a shocked voice over the comm. “Congratulations, gentlemen.”

Chuck would answer, but he’s is distracted by a sudden pang that flits across the drift between them.

‘ _Oi, what was that?_ ’ he asks mentally, the thought flowing across their connection far faster than words ever could.

_‘Hmm? Oh. Just thinking,_ ’ Sam answers. It’s not the words so much as the flash of Quorra’s face that follows that makes a spike of jealousy and anger bury itself in Chuck’s gut. Sam must feel it, because he quickly adds, ‘ _No, not like that. Jeeze, kid, she’s like a little sister to me. I just hoped that, y’know, maybe I could look out for her. Besides, it’s not like_ …’

The thought trails off, but the images that follow it—Sam’s fingers running over the hard, very much so _male_ body beneath him, a stubble-rimmed pair of lips nibbling at his own and sending sparks across his skin—say more than the older man needs to with words. Immediately, there’s a sense of foreboding, a feeling of self-recrimination that Chuck knows is not his own, and it takes him a moment—Sam's thoughts are in a whirl right now, and he can’t really pick anything out of the maelstrom—before it hits him.

‘ _No, mate, I don’t_ ,’ he starts, but then stops, figuring that showing his partner would be the best way to go about this. So, Chuck remembers. He remembers the tech’s son in Sydney, the first person he’d kissed and the only other boy there his age. He remembers snatching up copies of the photo shoots by both the Becket brothers and Gage twins, and making the pages of both sticky with his own release.

‘ _The Gages? Really?_ ’ Sam asks, incredulous, but still outwardly smiling with his head bowed in concentration. ‘ _Never would’ve pegged you for the type._ ’

‘ _What’s wrong with liking older men?_ ’ Chuck shoots back, relishing in the way Sam audibly gasps at the words, and the redhead doesn’t need the drift to know that arousal shoots down both their spines as he plays back the memories—Sam’s not-so-subtle flirting earlier, the brunet’s naked ass and Chuck’s impromptu boner: all of it.

‘ _I’m not that much older than you_ ,’ Sam argues back, meeting Chuck’s gaze and arching an eyebrow.

‘ _Right, because twenty six and sixteen is such a small age gap._ ’

‘ _Hey! The Gages are thirty three!_ ’

‘ _Mate, I do not even want to know how you know that_.’

Which, of course, means that the next image to dance between them is one of Sam and the same photoshoot of the older American team.

Chuck actually laughs out loud, recklessly confusing the sim techs.

‘ _Good to know we share taste in men, then_ ,’ Chuck sends to his partner with a smile of his own. ‘ _Now, are we gonna kill a simulated Kaiju or are we gonna sit around with our thumbs up our asses all day?_ ’

 

——

 

Less than a month later, on the tail of their twentieth simulator kill, Sam kisses him for the first time, all sweetness and joy and light.

Chuck maybe-sort of-probably kisses him back, though Sam has to remind him repeatedly to slow down, to take it easy, because they have all the time in the world. After all, as the older man tells him, they’re Jaeger pilots. They’re the ones who are going to _make sure_ they have all the time in the world.

 

——

 

They’re assigned the newest Australian Jaeger, Striker Eureka, when she launches later that year. The only Mark V in existence so far.

She’s _beautiful_.

Chuck considers it one of the best birthday gifts he’s ever gotten. Better, even, than the old copies of Jaeger pilot photo shoots Sam had somehow managed to rustle up for him, although the redhead had kicked the older man’s shins, laughing and growling threateningly, when he’d opened the box.

Sam’s only outward reaction to Striker is a grumble that he’s going to have to dig through her code and root out any bugs that Dillinger may have left behind, though Chuck can feel the pleased hum at  the back of his mind across the ghost drift that occasionally flares to life between them.

Only a few days later, the two of them take down their first Kaiju in Striker. They don’t even have time to take her out for a real test run. Hell, some of the knobs are still adorned with plastic wrap when they finally step into the conn pod.

She moves like a dream as they patrol the Miracle Mile, responding to their commands almost instantly, motions so fast that it almost makes Chuck’s head spin after doing sims in mark II’s and III’s. However, the second their fist makes first contact with the Kaiju, the feedback from the Jaeger making it feel as if he’s _actually beating the damn thing to death himself_ , something, some internal switch, flips within the younger pilot. Rage, hot and choking, seizes him like he’s never known before. All he can see, all he can _feel_ , is the monster that took his mother from him, and he wants to tear this damn bastard apart piece by piece.

A cool presence washes over the rage, though, and he looks up, startled, to see Sam leveling him with a look.

‘ _Control it, Chuck_ ,’ the older man sends to him, ‘ _don’t let it control you. Trust me. It’s not any better. It won’t bring her back._ ’

Chuck wants to scream, wants to shout at the older man to mind his own fucking business, but then the Kaiju takes a swing and them and rips a chunk out of their right side. Sam’s eyes go wide for a split second before they clench shut, and he cries out in pain, echoes of it travelling across the drift. The A.I. helpfully informs them that the missile launcher is now offline. Chuck mentally sends Sam what support he can, the older man still wincing from the feedback, and they proceed to beat the ever-living shit out of the monster. When they grab the Kaiju’s misshapen head in their hands and _twist_ , finally ending the fight, Chuck breathes a sigh of relief even as his blood roars in triumph. He restores the floor panels before they both disengage in a heap, their movements still retaining a semblance of synchronicity, but uncoordinated now that they’re not longer hooked into Striker.

They lie there for a moment, both removing their helmet at the same time with a pneumatic hiss, both gulping down lungfuls of the Pacific air as it leaks in through the vents, smelling of salt and acid. Sam stumbles over towards Chuck on his knees, falling in a heap at the redhead’s side and smiling at him even as he winces, one hand kneading at his abdomen.

“Okay,” the older man says softly, the lights from Striker’s displays painting his golden-brown hair in an array of colors as euphoria  bounces across their ghost drift, now bright and alive in the wake of their kill, “I gotta admit, yeah, that did feel pretty good.”

Chuck’s not sure which of them moves first, but their mouths are suddenly connected in a hungry kiss, and both of them are groping for the emergency release on their suits. It’s nearly impossible to get at the damn latches with their gloved fingers, and just as Chuck’s certain he’s about to get it, they hear the helicopters arrive, swooping down towards their now inactive Jaeger.

Sam pulls back and holds Chuck’s head in his hands, placing a chaste kiss on the redhead’s pouting lips before whispering, “Later.”

 

——

 

They fuck for the first time that night, the ghost drift alive and writhing between them until Chuck’s not even sure which of them is which, Sam buried so deeply inside of him that he’s not even sure they _are_ two separate people any more. And when the American finally lets go, finally releases himself inside the man beneath him, Chuck is almost forcibly thrown over the edge at the same time, a shout exploding from his lungs.

Sam whispers words of love against the Australian’s skin, words that Chuck swallows greedily and wants to return, but they get caught in his throat. Instead, he tries to let the ghost drift speak for him, and lets the warmth, the _fullness_ and _happiness_ that he’s feeling, seep across their mental link.

If the way Sam happily hums into his collar bone—where he’s busy sucking a lovebite into the freckle-stained flesh—is any indication, he understands.

Later, maybe they’ll finally talk about all the weirdness Chuck has seen in Sam’s head: computer worlds, programs hellbent on destroying the world, and so on.

For now, though, they have each other, in this moment. And that’s plenty enough for him.

 

——

 

When Herc finds out just under two years later, he levels Sam with a glare and doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t have to. Chuck can tell from their link that Sam understands the threat all too well.

Of course, it probably helps that Chuck, now eighteen—almost nineteen—smacks his father in the chest and yells, “Oiy, eyes off, ya wanker. I found him first. Get your own bloody American.”

The look on his father’s face transforms from one of anger to one of shock, then to a smirk.

“Nah,” he says offhandedly, “no need. I got two.”

Chuck blinks at his father for a moment, trying to determine what _exactly_ the older man is saying. Then it hits him.

“No,” he says, horror creeping up his spine as he shakes his head. “ _No_.”

“Oh _yes_ ,” his father purrs, smirk lifting higher, “and you would not _believe_ how far back the younger one can get his legs—”

Chuck punches his father in the face before running the other direction, the older man’s chuckles ringing in his ears as Sam races after him, laughing as well.

 

——

 

After Striker and Lucky run a mission together in Los Angeles—both having been transferred temporarily after Romeo Blue was moved to Anchorage to replace Brawler Yukon, Echo and Vulcan holding down the fort in Sydney—Chuck studiously avoids his father, Scott, and the Beckets that have somehow materialized in the after party. He also studiously ignores the way the four of them creep off at one point, thinking no one notices.

“Oh, let them have their fun,” Sam admonishes him, following his gaze and grinning, his words slurring as they fall from between his lips. “Love’s rare ‘nough these days, anyway. Not like they’re hurting anyone, anyway.”

“Yeah, but,” Chuck’s face twists, “they’re _brothers_.” When Sam continues to give him a blank look, he tries again. “They’re _two pairs_ of brothers. And they’re all _having sex_. Like, ‘the fuck?”

Sam fixes him with a _look_ , and Chuck realizes that he may or may not have just ruined his chances of getting laid tonight. Well shit.

“There’re two-hundred-something feet tall monsters trying to kill us all, Chuck,” he says slowly, words likely as precise as he can make them. “They actually kill us all by themselves, their blood is poisoning our oceans, and half a dozen major Pacific cities are totally, completely irradiated. I think a little potential incest is the _least_ of our worries. Besides,” his gaze shifts past Chuck, to the spot that the Lucky and former Gipsy pilots had been occupying, “they make each other happy. I mean, have you _seen_ Yancy lately?”

Chuck blanches, because, “No! I have not! Why would I look at that fuckin’ seppo when I have you?”

Sam’s lips thin as his eyebrow rises. “Oh, c’mon Chuck. I know you used to jerk off to their spread in GQ magazine. I’ve watched you do it, remember?” He taps his temple with a finger while his other hand tangles itself with Chuck’s fingers. “It’s perfectly fine if you look at Yancy and Raleigh Becket, love. I mean, hell, I’d be more surprised if you _didn’t_ look. But,” he adds, expression turning serious—well, as serious as a mostly-tipsy Sam could be, “that’s not what I was talking about anyway. You remember when Gipsy was decommissioned?”

Chuck nods. Everyone remembers that. Yancy Becket had been torn from his conn pod after a Kaiju had ripped the arm off his Jaeger, leaving both pilots—both Beckets—with matching circuitry scars, though Yancy’s are more sporadic in their placement while Raleigh’s are concentrated on his left shoulder and arm. However, getting pulled from the pod had… done something to Yancy. Everyone had noticed, even after he’d been released from the hospital. Yancy had always been the Becket brother, according to his dad, who was devious as a fox but played like he was an innocent kitten, all claws hidden underneath layers of fluff and sweetness. After Knifehead, though, he was… lesser. And his brother had been no better, though Raleigh’s brand of damage was— _is_ —much louder, much less well-understood. After all, how do you deal with a part of your mind suddenly being hollowed out and replaced with the ghost of a man who, by all rights, _should_ be dead?

Lately, though, yeah, Chuck has noticed that both Beckets—Yancy especially—have looked less ashen, less like they’re constantly living with the echoes of death ringing in their ears. Sam must see something in his face, because he smiles lopsidedly and nods.

“That started after your dad and uncle took them in.”

“Huh.” It’s all Chuck can really say on the matter. After all, he’s suddenly finding that he’s not really sure how he feels about any of it at all.

“Just give it time,” Sam insists softly, leaning in to plant an alcohol-scented kiss on Chuck’s cheek. “It’s not that big a deal, really. I just don’t want you to give your dad a hard time about something he’s doing that’s, I dunno, I guess actually good.”

“I guess you have a point,” the redhead admits softly because, yeah, maybe it’s the alcohol speaking, but Sam’s words do make a kind of sense. After all, like he’s saying, it’s not really his business, anyway; they’re all consenting adults: it’s not like they’re hurting anyone. If anything, they’re helping each other to heal. He turns into the kiss his boyfriend is offering, and gets a happy hum from the brunet when their lips brush.

Okay, so maybe his chances of getting laid tonight aren’t as bad as he’d first thought.

 

——

 

Sam gets a call from Quorra to say that she’s finally found a partner. She’s been damn persistent, working on a brand new Jaeger—another Mark V, from the sounds of it—but also attending Kwoon matches a day or two every few weeks to check her compatibility with any new recruits. Normally, she wipes the floor with them; after all, Chuck’s seen how Quorra moves, knows that the silver-eyed girl had been quite proficient in combat back on The Grid, and that her fighting prowess had only seemed to grow when she came to the real world. She moves with a speed that still boggles Chuck’s mind; he’d faced her once and only once, and she’d handed his ass to him so soundly that he’d declined a rematch.

Even he knows his limits.

Her partner, as it turns out, is the adopted daughter of one of the Marshalls—Chuck’s dad’s old friend from his RAAF days, Stacker Pentecost. Three days later, the two of them are transferred to LA while Chuck and Sam are still there. The first time Chuck meets Mako, Quorra’s partner, he finds himself suddenly aware of the way the two of them are constantly catching each other’s fingers, the way they stands so close together at all times, practically shoulder to shoulder.

Well then.

A glance over at Sam tells Chuck that this is a new development for him as well, but the older man eventually just shrugs and drags Chuck over to meet the girls.

 

——

 

“You really expect me to believe that?” Chuck asks his partner, trying to inject as much scorn as he can into his words.

“No, Chuck,” Sam says, infuriatingly calm. “I expect you to doubt everything I say despite the fact that you’ve had access to my memories, which prove that this isn’t complete nonsense. _Yes_ , I expect you to believe it.”

“But it’s _impossible_ ,” Chuck reiterates the same thing he’d said a few minutes ago when Sam had approached him with the device and this hare-brained idea. “You can’t fuckin’ _talk_ to a Jaeger. They’re… they’re just machines, mate. They aren’t, like, people or anything.”

“Jaegers have A.I.s that assist pilots in operating them,” Sam argues back. “These A.I.s are capable of learning and are, by all accounts, programs of their own. They’re just much smarter than your average program. And I think we could talk to her, if we tried.”

“Yeah, but, by allowing your gun-thing-whatever to zap us into, what, cyberspace?”

“Exactly,” the American says, the way his eyes widen at Chuck’s perceived understanding all the more annoying because, really, he doesn’t get it. “And once there, we can try to find Striker and talk to her.”

“But that’s—”

“Oh, for christ’s sake,” Sam grits out, finally cracking and rolling his eyes, “just stand still, would you?”

“What, _no_ , you are not shooting me with—”

But it’s too late by then. Sam’s already entered the command, and the world vanishes around Chuck in a whirl of color and flashing lights.

 

——

 

“Chuck? C’mon Chuckles, wake up,” comes a familiar voice, and Chuck waves it away. Since when has their bed been this hard?

“Five more min’tes,” he mumbles groggily, trying to roll over. The myriad of blankets that Sam always seems to sleep with—a holdover, he’d explained, from his days of living out of a garage-apartment with a couch for a bed—are absent, and Chuck gropes blindly for something, anything, familiar. Instead, his hands meet nothing but hard plastic.

“Chuck, c’mon, time to get up,” Sam is saying to him, shaking his shoulder. “There’s someone here who wants to meet you.”

“Fuck off, pretty boy,” he grumbles, trying to roll over and grope blindly for the covers.

“I was under the impression that _he_ was the testable genius,” comes a female voice that is hauntingly familiar, “while you are the, what does he call you? Computer geek?”

Chuck’s eye rip themselves open to see Sam kneeling above him, wearing some kind of black body suit and armor that has white lights running the length of it. He takes a moment to appreciate how snug the fit on the suit is for a moment before his gaze is drawn to the woman kneeling on his other side. The first thing he notices is her eyes.

They’re the exact same color as Striker’s visor.

The second thing he notices is the rest of her face.

Except for the eyes, she looks exactly like his mother. She’s wearing armor like Sam’s, except it’s the same color as Striker’s plating, and the lights running the length of it are a deep red that fades into an intense blue towards her fingertips. He reaches a hand up towards her, hardly believing his eyes.

“M-Mom?”

The word is torn from his throat in a half-sob, and as soon as it’s out he sees the woman’s face fall and Sam’s shoulders go tense.

“Oh dear,” she says, turning her inhuman, amber gaze on Sam. “Was it a mistake to choose to appear this way? Charles simply seems to have many positive memories originating from the presence of this form, so I thought—”

His stomach falls into his knees, and Chuck lets out a wordless growl, rolling over and getting to his feet as he wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. A hand, his mind notes, that is covered in armor the same color as his drivesuit except for his middle and ring finger, the design and white lights running over his limbs and down his body the same as Sam’s. He shoves off the hands of the two people who reach for him and breaks into a run, head down, and—

And almost falls off into the _infinite fucking abyss_ that surrounds the island of floating green-grey metal-plastic-something on which they’re standing, white and blue lights pulsing faintly down the length of the platform. The only reason he doesn’t fall is the steadying grip Sam barely manages to get on his arm.

“Chuck, wait, please,” his boyfriend is saying behind him, “I’m sorry, I should’t’ve just forced us in like that, but you, well… I just,” there’s a sigh, “I wanted you to believe me. And I thought… I thought you’d like it.”

Anger flares in Chuck’s gut, and he whirls around, cheeks heating.

“You thought I’d _like_ this?” he screeches. “What, you waving a fucking _doll_ with my dead mum’s face around? You thought I’d _like_ that? Are you fucking _mental_?”

“I can assure you,” says the woman from where she’s standing at the center of the platform, “that I am truly sorry. I would not have chosen to appear this way if I knew that it would evoke such a negative response from you.” She looks thoughtful for a moment before she adds with a curious look in Sam’s direction, “Perhaps formally introducing myself would help? My name is—”

“Striker Eureka, I guessed that, thanks,” Chuck grits out. “I’ve been in his head—through _you_ , mind you—so it doesn’t take a fuckin’ ‘testable genius’ to figure this shite out.”

Striker grimaces. “Yes. That is correct. I… I am sorry that I have upset you, Char—Chuck,” she corrects herself with a flick of her head, “that was not my intention. I… merely wanted you to be happy.”

“Happy?” the redhead snorts. “What does a bloody _computer program_ understand about happiness?”

“Chuck,” Sam’s tone is warning, and the hand that’s returned to his elbow only serves to reinforce the point, but Striker is already frowning at them both, gaze shifting to a spot somewhere just past the two of them.

“I do admit,” she begins, “the idea of understanding human emotions seemed quite foreign to me several years ago when I was first programmed by M. Dillinger. But then you and Samuel— _Sam_ , my apologies—first started… drifting… through me.”

Those amber eyes land on Chuck again, and he nearly gasps at the _emotion_ he sees in their depths.

“When you two drift, it is a straightforward process for you. You simply share your memories, your processing power, between the two of you, and leave it to the computer—me—to translate the things you do or think into motion. However, the memories you use to establish your connection do not… fade. They return to your long-term memory in _your_ minds, where they will remain ‘forgotten’ until you need to access them again, but I have no such process of selective remembrance. The memories you share are kept here,” she touches a finger to her temple, “always. Over time, I suppose one could say that they have affected me. I would even go so far as to say that I have become,” Striker coughs politely, “ _attached_ to the two of you, on some kind of emotional level. I do not pretend to understand it. I only know that I have seen your pain, and that I wish to prevent more from occurring.”

“Wait,” Sam mutters from beside Chuck, “you mean you have… _feelings_ for us?”

Striker cocks her head at them, and a smile graces her features, the expression strangely human but something alien to it as well.

“Not in the same way you two are sexually attracted to each other, no,” she says with the smile widening slightly as Chuck feels his face flush red, “nor in the way you two are clearly deeply emotionally attached to one another. However, I would describe it as…” she pauses, furrowing her brows together before finally continuing, “as the way a mother cares for her children. I do not wish to see you two become injured or hurt, and would gladly sacrifice myself before I saw either of you come to harm.”

Chuck can’t say anything to that, the words resonating of off something deep within him, so he simply nods.

 

——

 

When they finally rematerialize in Striker’s conn pod four hours later, it’s been just under four seconds since they left. Striker hums around them, the sound seeming to have taken on a new, decidedly lighter and more _content_ tone.

“So,” Sam starts after a moment, “are you still angry with me?”

Chuck regards his boyfriend for a moment, the way his blue eyes are shining with sincerity, before nodding.

“Yeah, _but_ ,” he adds quickly, “not as pissed as I was at first. It was actually… nice. A bit of a shock at first, but I’ll be okay. No sex for a week, though.”

He manages to restrain his laughter at the crestfallen look on Sam’s face, but it’s a near thing.

 

——

 

They make it four days. On the fourth day, Chuck can’t stand it anymore and pulls Sam to the bed, citing the fact that the older man has ‘forgotten’ to take his clothes to the bathroom with him when he showers for the, obviously, fourth time in a row. Afterwards, as they’re lying tangled in each other, Chuck’s ass throbbing pleasantly, a thought occurs to him.

“Could we bang in the, uh,” he pauses, trying to come up with a word that accurately describes what he’s talking about. In the end, he just says, “in the computer-place-whatever, too?”

The question seems to catch Sam off guard before his brain kicks back into gear and he bursts out in snickers. Truthfully, after the two rounds of vigorous fucking the older man had given him, Chuck’s honestly surprised his boyfriend is coherent at all.

“I mean, sure, but only if you wanted Striker to watch. After all, we’d kinda be doing it in, uh, in her brain.”

“Well, since she already sees us fucking in our memories,” Chuck reasons, rolling over so that he’s facing his boyfriend and placing a soft—one might even say _tender_ , except that Chuck Hansen is _not_ tender—kiss on the brunet’s lips, “what’s different about her seeing us do it firsthand, eh? Besides, the equivalent of an hour for every second of real time? Imagine what we could do with that kind of time on our hands.”

He swallows the throaty groan that Sam lets out at that, straddling the older man as he does. The interested twitch Sam makes quickly becomes much more than that, his groans turning increasingly urgent, more needy, as he hardens in the cleft of Chuck’s ass.

The Australian can’t keep the smirk off his face.

Looks like they’re going for round three.

 

——

 

Chuck’s armpit-deep in machinery and electrical equipment, working on Striker’s elbow—damn thing hasn’t been responding right for a few days during test runs, and she’d complained during their last visit of some lingering soreness there anyway—when Sam comes and finds him.

“Hey Chuck,” the other man says in that soft little way of his that Chuck doesn’t need the ghost drift to recognize as meaning that he’s got a surprise for the redhead. “Can we talk?”

“Can it wait a minute?” Chuck asks lightly, blindly grabbing a wrench to open the panel that’s hiding the set of hydraulics he thinks have gone bad. “Kinda busy. Besides, aren’t you supposed to be hunting down bugs in Striker’s OS or somethin’?”

“Chuck,” The way Sam says his name this time, still quiet, but all lightness gone from his tone, makes Chuck jerk back in surprise. Which, of course, means that he manages to hit his head on a pipe jutting out from the recesses of who-even-cares-where-it-still-fucking-hurts. Swearing loudly, the Australian pulls back and rubs the spot on his head with one hand while the other wipes at the sweat on his face.

“What _is_ it Sa—” he starts tersely, turning around, but the words die in his throat.

Because there’s Sam.

Sam on one knee.

Sam with a small, velvet box in his hand.

Sam looking at him like he can’t decide whether to laugh or try to keep his face gravely serious, expression some cross between nervous and amused.

“Chuck,” he says again, laughter hidden in his tone that’s still deathly serious, “you, well,” he looks down for a moment and chuckles, “you know I’m not always the best with words. I mean, we have the drift between us and everything, but, even so, I love you, and, I want…” The brunet trails off, taking a deep breath before getting out in a rush, “I want to marry you so you’ll never even think of doubting it. Ever. So, will you?”

Chuck stares at Sam, at the way his face is so open, earnest, _loving_ , and suddenly feels like everything’s closing in on him while the floor drops from beneath his feet. So he does what he always does.

He punches Sam in the face and runs, hands still coated in grease.

 

——

 

Sam, being the ridiculously understanding asshole he is, finds him later in their room, hiding under the covers, getting the sheets filthy with the mess still coating his arms. The older man sits on the bed, which Chuck only knows because he feels the mattress dip with a familiar weight, and lays a hand on the spot where Chuck’s shoulder is hidden.

“You know you don’t have to say yes, right?” Sam says softly. If Chuck didn’t know better, he would have thought that the tremor in the older man’s voice meant he was crying.

“I know you’re only twenty, and, well, I’m thirty, so, I mean, I understand if you want to wait, or if  you’re not ready, or if you just don’t want to at all, so—”

“Oh my god, you _fucking_ seppo,” Chuck growls, throwing the covers off of himself and turning over, terror vanishing beneath his annoyance. “ _Yes_ , you goddamn clod. Alright? I didn’t fuckin’—” run “—take some time to think it over because you’re fuckin’ _older_ than me, arsehole. I did it because I was _not fuckin’ expecting_ that. Does that compute with your computer brain, eh?”

Sam’s eyes, which had been wide with surprise and one of which has a smear of grease just underneath it where Chuck’s fist had made contact, flicker with something light and almost on the verge of _joyous_.

“So is that a—”

“ _Yes_ , you sod. That was a yes. Give me the fucking ring.”

That laughter with which Chuck has become intimately familiar over the years, which never ceases to make his heart thump frantically in his chest, washes over him.

“Of course, babe. But, uh, maybe you should wash off your hands first.”

 

——

 

The next time they visit Striker, she takes one look at them and nods, her amber eyes flashing with warmth as a smile pulls at her lips.

“Yes, good, it is about time you asked him, Sam.”

Chuck blinks at her, then at Sam, then narrows his eyes until all he can make out of them are the glowing lights that run up and down their suits.

“You knew,” he accuses the Jaeger A.I. “How the _fuck_ did you know through the drift but I _didn’t_? He might be a genius but even he’s not _that_ bloody smart.”

“Hey!” Sam protests in mock offense as Striker’s grin turns slightly guilty.

“Sam may have come to me and requested that I filter certain aspects of his thoughts from you. Once I deemed that it was not a significant enough portion of his thoughts as to cause disruption within your neural bridge, I agreed.”

Chuck sputters at her words, and turns away, striding towards the edge of the platform they materialize on when they come here. He looks out into the inky blackness that surrounds them, trying to distract himself from the anger churning in his gut, and notices, for perhaps the first time, that it’s not actually black at all. Instead, it’s a shifting sort of red/black color, with lightning—purple, blue, green, he can’t really seem to tell what color it is—arcing in its depths as symbols he doesn’t recognize flit through the not-so-empty space, appearing and disappearing seemingly at random. The more he tries to focus on them, the more indistinct they become, until, eventually, his eyes and head both start to hurt from the strain.

“Apologies,” comes Striker’s voice from his left, and Chuck does _not_ jump at the sound, no, he does not, “I carved out as large a space within my processes as I could to accommodate both you and Sam. I understand that your minds are not easily able to perceive twenty five dimensions, so I would not advise attempting it. I have been told the results can be,” he can almost _hear_ the smirk in her voice, “unpleasant.”

There’s a moment of silence in which the Australian looks back down at his hands, fiddling with the loop of green material that surrounds his pinky. Eventually, Striker takes a breath.

“I am sorry for deceiving you, Chuck,” she says, tone now solemn. “I would not have done it if I believed it would hurt you. Or if I calculated it would affect the drift between the two of you. Although, I believe you may enjoy knowing,” barely-contained amusement and fondness enter her words, replacing the trace of guilt there, “it was a very near thing.”

 

——

 

“So what did she mean?” Chuck asks his boyfriend later once they’re back in their room, cock buried deep within the other man.

“ _Wha_ —” Sam manages to get out, the half-choked sound becoming completely garbled at the end as Chuck aims directly for his prostate and relentlessly grinds against the sensitive bundle. The Australian feels his mouth stretch in a smug expression as heat pools in his belly; the feeling of Sam fluttering around him both at the sensations Chuck is causing him and the way the brunet is trying desperately to keep half his wits about him is almost enough to drive Chuck to incoherence of his own.

“Striker,” he clarifies, leaning over Sam’s body until he can tongue at the older man’s collarbone, his forearms, braced on either side of the brunet’s body, pushing lean legs back until they’re almost flush with the mattress. The motion makes Sam arch his body back off the bed ever so slightly, and allows the younger pilot to thrust that much deeper, get an angle that he knows is that much more perfect; after all, he and Sam have been together for almost four years now: he knows what it means when the other man starts making those throaty, half-screaming, half-whimpering sounds. Knows that half-smile that the other man can’t help but make, eyes shining, when Chuck pounds into him just right.

It’s the same expression he gets when Chuck clamps down _just so_ when their positions are reversed.

“When Striker told me it was a near thing. What did she mean, eh?” the redhead continues, nibbling at the inside edge of his boyfriend’s collarbone, tongue chasing his bite marks down into the dip. When Sam doesn’t answer right away, Chuck smirks, snaps his hips forward with punishing force, and then draws out until he can feel the other man’s rim trembling around the head. The cadence of the noises Sam’s making immediately shift to frustration, a pout forming on his lips as he tries to angle his hips up further, but Chuck holds him down mercilessly, denying him with a mischievous grin.

“Chuck, _Chuck please_ ,” the other man is panting, voice shattered, desperate, hands scrabbling at the Australian’s back, his legs, trying to force him back inside, “fuck, baby, _please_ , c’mon, _please_ no, please don’t— _please,_ just— _Chuck_ —”

Chuck bites down on a hardened nipple, which makes the stream of words cut off to be replaced by incomprehensible babble. He tongues, teethes, and sucks on the nub until he’s satisfied with the cadence of noises coming from his boyfriend, then pulls back and blows on it gently.

“What did Striker mean,” he repeats, voice calm, trying to not let it show just how much Sam’s  words, his sounds, the way he _feels_ underneath Chuck’s hands, are getting to him, “when she said that it was a near thing?”

“Sh-she meant tha—oh _god_ , _please_ , Chuck,” Sam whines as Chuck accidentally lets his hips stutter forward an inch or so, but he brings the older man back with a harsh scrape of his teeth against hot flesh and a whispered _focus, love_ , “that I thought about us—about us, about us getting married, staying together— _fuck_ , I thought, I _think_ about it all the time, Chuck.”

The redhead looks up at that, doesn’t know how to _answer_ something like that, and finds Sam’s eyes: blue pools of molten want and _need_ and _longing_. Heat gathers at the corners of his vision that he wants to blink away, years of conditioning himself to ignore such feelings trying to kick in. But Sam is there—is _here_ , is _his_ —and Chuck pulls the other man towards him, the action serving to both impale the brunet on his cock once more and bring them close enough together that Chuck can seal their lips against one another in a fervent kiss, swallowing the sounds his lover makes.

Because, no, he doesn’t know how to answer that with words. He might be more in touch with his _feelings_ —the word still makes him cringe on the inside—now than he’d been four years ago, but… that doesn’t mean he’s gotten any better at this part, at the actually _talking_ about it part. So he speaks the only way he knows, with his hands, his lips, and the staccato, almost-too-much rhythm he sets his hips to, making sure to aim right for the other man’s prostate.

And when Sam comes between them, coating both their bodies and pulling Chuck into oblivion behind him, the only things Chuck knows are the feel of the ring on Sam’s left hand where it grips his arm and the sound of whispered love in his ear.

 

——

 

The day they decommission Striker, Chuck is inconsolable. With their visits every few days, she’s become like another family member to him. To think that some goddamn politicians are going to just flip her off— _kill_ her once her memory banks wear down from disuse—over _money_ …

It’s too much.

They visit Striker only hours before she’s shut off for good, and Chuck actually hugs the A.I.’s avatar. She looks as shocked as he feels, given that he’s never actually _touched_ her before this. Something to do with the way she still looks like his mother. And perhaps this is why he does it: he doesn’t want to lose his mom a second time, not when it feels almost like he’s just got her back.

However, she seems to brush off the surprise rapidly, because there are unfamiliar fingers carding through his hair, and a voice in his ear.

“Hush, now, Chuck,” Striker tells him, obviously trying to be as soothing as she can be. The red and blue lights on her suit pulse gently, the red at the core flowing outward to replace the blue at the periphery until the blue bleeds back into the center, the colors reversing themselves. “It will be fine. So long as you boys live on, I am satisfied.”

 

——

 

When Mutavore attacks and they both are practically shoved back into the conn pod—although, truthfully, no one had to tell them twice –the drift is filled with a sense of almost relief.

Chuck’s not sure if it’s from either of them.

And if they spend perhaps a few minutes longer than necessary manhandling the Kaiju, bloodying and weakening it before finally taking it out with their anti-Kaiju missiles, well.

Who’s to know, really?

 

——

 

When Stacker asks Raleigh and Yancy to come out of retirement to pilot a restored Gipsy Danger, Herc and Scott both make a fuss. Loudly. Chuck understands both sides, really. On one hand, other than himself and Sam and Striker, there are only four other functioning Jaegers still in existence: Lucky Seven, Crimson Typhoon, Cherno Alpha, and Royal Voltaic, the only other Mark V in existence, and the Jaeger that Quorra and Mako had been assigned to after they’d found each other. Gipsy would raise that number to five, six in all. On the other hand, Chuck knows that the Beckets retired because of neurological damage the older brother had sustained during Knifehead’s attack—damage that made it likely that plugging him into a drift again would kill him. The prospect makes Chuck nervous both for the mission about which Stacker had briefed them, and for his father and uncle’s well-being.

However, in the end, the Beckets agree. Chuck doesn’t hear many of the details of the ensuing argument—doesn’t _need_ to, given the raised voices he hears from the direction of the joint Becket-Hansen room—but he knows by the end of it that Raleigh and Yancy have gotten their way.

 

——

 

The next day, the Beckets proceed to nearly blow up the ‘dome when Yancy falls into a RABIT of his own death and Raleigh is unable to pull him out of it.

Chuck makes his opinion known to Stacker in the older man’s office while his father and Scott are there, Sam a constant presence at his side. He wants to shout, wants to rant and rave and call the pair of blond brothers washed-up has-beens. Wants to demand that they not be let anywhere near a Jaeger again. The rage at the two of them for nearly messing up _everything_ because they clearly _couldn’t handle it_ is nearly palpable, but every time his voice rises into a register that might be considered more than appropriate, Sam’s hand finds its way to his shoulder, and Chuck forces himself to take a breath before continuing.

Herc and Scott agree with him, though not for the same reasons. Given that they have a more intimate relationship with the brothers and are essentially acting as their caretakers, Stacker asks to speak with Scott and Herc alone. Chuck emerges from the office to find Yancy and Raleigh waiting outside, the two of them standing side-by-side. The rage from before wells up again in his gut, but this time it isn’t Sam’s presence at his back—as tangible as an actual touch with the way the ghost drift is flaring between them, so soon after Mutavore—that stalls his words. No, instead, it’s the way he can see that Yancy is clearly resisting the urge to curl into his brother, is white-knuckling the younger Becket’s hand in a grip that makes Chuck want to wince in sympathy.

In that moment, he realizes that, as angry and upset as any of them might be about the failed drift, not one of them could possibly be as upset as the two Beckets are now. After all, they used to have one of the strongest drifts in the corps—a thing of legend. Yet, here they are now: trying to protect the people they love they only way they know, and they can’t do it anymore.

So instead of doing, of _saying_ , what he wants, Chuck bows his head and says, softly, “‘M sorry it didn’t work.”

He knows that they’re looking at him, can hear them speaking to him—apologies of their own, he’s sure—but he… can’t.

He doesn’t punch anyone this time, but he ends up running—well, _walking_ —away just the same. Not because he’s afraid, but because he just…

He can’t.

Sam’s voice follows him down the hallway as he explains to the brothers what’d been discussed, their soft responses floating through the quiet after the redhead until he rounds the corner and breaks into a run.

 

——

 

Sam finds him less than an hour later in Striker’s conn pod.

“Well that didn’t take long,” Chuck remarks when he hears the pneumatic seals on the door hiss open. He doesn’t bother to turn or stand from where he’s sitting, slumped, against the wall. The words earn him a snort.

“You usually go one of three places when you’re upset. This is number two.”

Chuck lets out a snort of his own.

“And where’s number one, then?”

“Wherever I am,” Sam answers, kneeling beside the redhead and splaying his fingers over Chuck’s cheek. The Australian doesn’t know how long they stay like that, his boyfriend’s—his _fiancé’s_ —palm pressed to his jaw, the ring a warm weight in the contact. All he knows is that, at some point, he starts speaking.

“I don’t…  I don’t want them backing us up. Not when they’re a ticking time bomb. But…”

“But you don’t want to force them to stay behind because they might be useful,” Sam finishes for him, eyes far too understanding, “and you know that, in their situation, you’d want the same thing they’ve been offered: and chance to protect those they love. But what’s really bothering you,” the brunet adds, “is that you see in them what could easily happen to any one of us. And that scares you more than anything.”

At the look Chuck gives him, Sam just arches an eyebrow. “What? I drift with you, Chuck. And even if I didn’t… I listen. Both in the drift and out. At least,” he lets out a sound that might be an attempt at a laugh, “I like to think I do.”

Chuck knuckles at the other man’s ribcage gently, allowing himself to smile slightly.

“I know y’do, love.”

 

——

 

They talk about it.

Well, they talk about whether or not they want the Beckets to come with them. In the end, they decide to reserve some judgment, since it’d been the Becket’s first time in a Jaeger in five years. Chuck maintains he’s not completely comfortable with it, but Sam at least makes him consider the possibility. It’s not the first time that Chuck wonders what kind of person he’d be if he hadn’t met the other man.

Of course, they come to find out that Stacker has no such qualms, and has grounded the brothers.

Scott and Herc are being insufferable about it at dinner that evening—even Chuck can see that, though he knows it’s born from the fact that the two men love the Beckets and don’t want to see them hurt—so Chuck and Sam exchange exasperated expressions and follow the blonds when they leave the mess together. The action earns them a number of surprised looks, but they ignore them with ease. Raleigh and Yancy don’t say anything when Striker’s pilots catch up with them, simply head for Gipsy’s bay. They eat in silence for a while as some of Mako’s people—how she has time to pilot _and_ run a restoration project, Chuck has no idea—continue to shore up the retrofitted reactor.

It’s perhaps the first time that Chuck has actually had an honest-to-god conversation with either brother. And, in that time, he comes to understand what his father and uncle see in the pair. They’re funny, yeah, but also down-to-earth in a way that belies their relative youth. He remembers hearing that Raleigh especially had been wild and rambunctious, supposedly like a puppy, but Knifehead and time both seem to have changed that; it had left behind a man who was very thoughtful and was also protective of his brother to an almost insane extent, but who somehow still managed to laugh at his own lame jokes, or stare in wonder as Sam told his stories of being inside of a computer world.

As an added bonus, up close, both are even more stunning than they’d been in the photo shoots Chuck had collected as a teen. Time had been very kind to them, indeed.

Sam may or may not have teased him mercilessly about that later after he made an offhand comment.

 

——

 

The double event goes far worse than any of them could’ve predicted.

Sure, it’s two Kaiju at once, both bigger and stronger than anything they’ve faced previously. But they have five—four, if you discount Striker, who’s been ordered to hang back unless absolutely necessary—Jaegers to face them. One of the Kaiju, codename Otachi, manages to kill Crimson before any of them can so much as blink, rearing out of the water and crushing the Wei triplets within its acid-soaked jaws. They don’t even have time to scream. And, even worse, as soon as it looks like Lucky, Cherno, and Royal might be getting the upper hand on Otachi, Leatherback jumps them, casually punches right through Lucky’s chest from behind, collapsing her nuclear reactor and effectively gutting her, before releasing a burst that fries Striker and Royal’s systems.

The pain of Leatherback’s attack is like nothing Chuck’s ever felt. It’s like every single nerve in his body is on fire, trying to burn its way out of him. He can hear Cherno outside, fighting desperately, and he and Sam both disengage, grabbing flare guns as they head for the hatch because, as Sam says, they have to do _something_. They reach the rain-soaked darkness just in time to see Otachi clamp its jaws around one of Cherno’s arms as Leatherback pulls harshly in the other direction, ripping the limb off with a horrifying ease. The action slams the Russian Jaeger into Royal, and the two of them go down in a heap. Chuck watches, heart in his throat, scream of anger and defiance and helplessness working its way out of his throat, as Leatherback rears back to finish them both off with its huge fists.

Which is when Gipsy arrives.

In a ballsy attack that leaves Chuck’s mind absolutely boggled, the Beckets manage to coordinate with Cherno to take down both Kaiju practically single-handedly, the Russians merely stunning Leatherback long enough for Gipsy to empty an entire clip from a plasmacaster into the monster’s side. Otachi, on the other hand, meets its fate at the end of one of Gipsy’s new chain swords, being neatly bisected from neck to armpit. Chuck may or may not cheer them on the whole time from atop Striker. Sam may or may not just smirk at him the entire time, rain flattening his hair to his forehead.

 

——

 

All in all, they’re down to three serviceable Jaegers. They don’t have the parts necessary to replace Cherno’s lost arm—and Sasha refuses to let Aleksis pilot while the Russian man’s body is still recovering from the shock of said loss—and Lucky’s reactor, what's left of it, is in complete shambles. The Weis are simply... gone. Striker, through some miracle, is mostly undamaged except for a battery of fried electronics—the A.I. core is thankfully unharmed, its shielding that was designed to prevent interference from all the other ambient parts protecting it well enough—and a few scratches from the tussle with Otachi before Leatherback had shut them down. Gipsy is worse-off, with dents and tears in its plating where both Kaiju had mercilessly attempted to crush and claw through to either the reactor or pilots, and half the armor on her right arm is burned away from when the Beckets had ripped out Otachi’s acid gland.

As Chuck’s dad and uncle both _felt_ the Kaiju essentially rip their heart out, both are still in medical. Which, of course, means that that’s the first place Gipsy and Striker’s pilots all head as soon as they reach the ‘dome, ignoring the throngs of cheering techs and soldiers. When they arrive, it’s to find that Quorra is also there with a broken arm sustained when Cherno had been pushed into Royal. Which means that, of the three still-functioning Jaegers, only two can jockey.

“It almost makes me wish we were back on the Grid,” the Iso tells Sam mournfully while Chuck nods in understanding, sifting through the memories the older man had shown him. Hell, if he were in a place where you could regrow a whole damn arm with the push of the right button, he's not sure that he'd've left. Except, of course, for all the other memories of that place.

Quorra and Mako accompany Sam and Chuck into the Hansens’ room, Lucky’s pilots both laid out in their beds, unconscious and hooked up to countless machines that are monitoring their vitals. Each man has a Becket glued to their side, Raleigh with Scott and Yancy with Herc, the two brothers sitting back-to-back in between the beds. The blonds both look up when the four of them enter, heavy gazes eventually landing on Chuck. They both stand , still holding the hand of their respective Hansen, and open their mouths as one to speak, but before they can so much as utter a single word Chuck has crossed the room and has wrapped an arm around each of them.

“Thank you,” he whispers into their ears, “for saving them. For saving all of us. I was wrong about you. I’m sorry.”

He can hear both Beckets draw in surprised breaths before Sam’s voice washes over the three of them.

“Just accept it, guys,” Chuck can hear the smirk in his voice, “trust me: he _never_ apologizes. You two saved all our hides today.”

When Chuck feels warmth running down his face, neither Becket says anything. He supposes that’s a good enough tradeoff for all of them.

 

——

 

After Stacker gives the order to suit up for their final assault—dubbed Operation Pitfall—Chuck and Sam both go visit Striker as the nuke they’re going to use to collapse the Breach is being strapped to her back. As the familiar rushing sensation washes over him, the world blurring before coming into focus once more, Chuck is overcome with a horrifying feeling of _finality_. Which, he reasons to himself, is why, when Striker appears before them, he can’t move. He wants to reach out, to hug her as he had before the decommissioning, because some part of him _needs_ that contact, needs to be reminded that she’s _more_ than just a machine that they use to share their minds. She’s _Striker_. She’s _real_ to them; more than that, she’s practically _family_.

And yet he can’t.

The sad smile Striker gives them both speaks only of understanding.

“It is alright, Chuck, Sam,” she says lowly, and the mention of his copilot’s name has Chuck glancing over to see that Sam’s expression is about as upset as Chuck feels. “If this is to be our last mission together, then I am at peace.”

“How can you say that?” Chuck accuses her softly. The only outward response he gets to the words is a single blink from the A.I. before,

“Because you are both my children, my brothers, and my fathers. You have taken care of me as I have taken care of you. And, if nothing else, our journey together has been extraordinary. And,” she takes a breath that Chuck knows is unnecessary, “though it has taken me many cycles to understand that, I am at peace with it.”

Chuck doesn’t agree, but, then again, what choice does he have?

  

——

 

Stacker pilots Royal alongside Mako. The moment probably would’ve made Chuck tear up if he’d been given enough time to actually appreciate the fact that father and daughter are drifting together, but they’re all quickly strapped in and being flown out towards Guam and the mission that will, one way or another, be their last. Chuck catches a hint of discomfort through the drift coming from Sam when they finally seal ports and submerge, and he sends an inquiring tendril to the other man.

‘ _The bomb’s just making it even more difficult for us to maneuver_ ,’ Sam explains. ‘ _It’s just bulky. Hopefully it won’t be a big deal_.’

‘ _Nah,_ ’ Chuck thinks back wryly as they continue piloting Striker forward, water pulling at their stabilization fins that were designed, in air, to give them enough drag that they didn’t flail out of control, ‘ _there’re just two Kaiju waiting for us at the bottom of the ocean, apparently_ guarding _the Breach. No big deal at all._ ’

  

——

 

When Slattern emerges from the Breach, the first category five ever, Chuck feels fear, cold and slick, drip down his spine for perhaps the second time since he’s stepped foot inside Striker. The Kaiju is _huge_ , easily twice Striker’s size, and the sound it makes as it faces them is nothing short of the howl of death itself. However, he and Sam both extend Striker’s stingblades and face off against it dutifully. When Slattern smashes them with its tails, he knows they can both feel the damage that the single blow has wrought, disabling half their systems—including the nuke’s harness—and nearly punching through to their core.

Royal is taken out quickly, her primary weapons—a pair of electrified and heated blades that descend from her wrists—overloading seconds after they’re activated in the conductive water. They seem to stun the larger of the category fours, Scunner, for perhaps a few critical seconds, but it proceeds to bat them around like a toy with its oversized claws as it convulses. The few seconds, though, allow Gipsy to come to their aid, but Raiju deprives the Mark III of one of its arms—Yancy’s side, this time—before Scunner turns and burrows its way into Royal’s vitals, effectively killing the Jaeger. Seconds later, two escape pods fly from the conn pod of the doomed behemoth, and Gipsy maims Scunner badly enough with its remaining arm that it is forced to retreat.

Chuck has just enough time to hear Sam shout a warning to him before Slattern is on them again, grabbing Striker and literally flipping her end over end. Panic takes over for perhaps the briefest of moments before the other man mentally grabs him back and forces him to focus. The next time they get their feet under them, the two men cry out as one, Sam blocking the massive claws that swing at them and Chuck using the momentum they gain from the hit to slash the monster’s throat wide open. It howls, seemingly taken off guard by the fact that what it had deemed an insignificant pest has actually wounded it, and they press the attack, stingblades sinking into its armpits and nearly severing its forelimbs. Over the comm, Raleigh is desperately trying to get his brother back, to get him to _focus_ , when Raiju attacks them again as Scunner watches.

Chuck doesn’t see what happens, but one of the Kaiju signatures completely disappears from their sensors, although one of Gipsy’s legs flashes as heavily damaged.

“Striker,” comes Tendo’s panicked voice through the comm, “both bogeys are converging on you. Repeat, both Kaiju are headed straight for you.”

“Striker, we’re coming for you!” Raleigh’s voice follows the communication from LOCCENT.

“Just hold on,” adds Yancy, voice strained. However, through the drift, Chuck knows that Sam is just as aware as he is that Gipsy’s not moving anywhere fast; not with their Jaeger crippled the way the readouts are saying it is.

The idea flashes between them, and Chuck’s not entirely sure which of them has it. However, he’s ultimately the one that ends up pressing his hand to the comm.

“No, Gipsy,” he calls out, “stay back as far as you can. We’ve got this.”

“Chuck, don’t be a—” Raleigh starts, but Yancy cuts him off.

“Kid, we’re not letting you throw your life away like that.”

“It makes sense,” Sam argues quickly, the urgency of the Kaiju that are both circling Striker warily weighing down on them, “Gipsy’s nuclear. And we have a big-ass bomb that’s now stuck on our back that we can shove down these asshole’s throats. Might as well use it.”

There’s silence, and then Yancy’s quiet voice: “Understood.”

On a whim, Chuck opens a private channel to Gipsy and adds, “Take care of my dad for me, eh wankers?” before he shuts down their comm relay completely. He doesn’t know if he can bear to hear the brothers’ response.

‘ _You ready for this, then?_ ’ Chuck asks Sam, then, feeling somehow as if spoken words are inadequate for this moment.

‘ _I’m with you ‘til the end, babe,_ ’ comes the response. ‘ _I just wish we’d actually gotten a chance to say our ‘I do’s and everything._ ’

‘ _Well, fine: I do, Sam Flynn. I love you, you fucking sentimental seppo bastard._ ’

There’s a burst of wry amusement over the drift before Sam sends back, ‘ _Love you, too, Chuck Hansen._ ’

They both reach for their controls, flipping the switches that will prime the bomb before they hover their fingers over the buttons that will set it off.

‘ _See you on the other side?_ ’ Chuck asks, reaching a hand across the space between them, towards his copilot.

‘ _I meant it when I said that I’m with you until the end.’_ Sam tells him, interlocking their fingers as best he can with the suits in the way; right now, it’s everything. _‘No matter where that end might be, I’ll be there waiting for you._ ’

The Kaiju, at some unseen signal, both roar and rush at Striker. Chuck steels himself. Feels the hand wrapped within his own tighten its grip.

Just as they both go to hit the switch, though, a third voice intrudes upon their drift.

‘ _NO._ ’

That’s all. A single, defiant word in a voice he thought he’d never hear again, before Chuck is being lifted up and away and shoved into an escape pod  much more quickly that the machinery should be moving before he’s being launched away from Striker. A miniature sun blooms underwater, and the redhead’s last coherent thought is of Sam before the shockwave is upon him. His head bangs against something hard, his helmet barely cushioning the blow, and pain wracks his entire body before all he knows is darkness.

  

——

 

When Chuck reawakens, it’s to find himself in the Shatterdome hospital. Quorra is sitting beside him, arm in a sling, and his father and uncle are both on his other side. His entire body feels as if he’d ended up on the wrong side of a bus, but he still manages to raise his head and whisper hoarsely, “Did we get ‘em?”

The words seem to startle those around him, as his father jumps and Quorra lets out a soft gasp. Scott seems to be the one to keep his cool, because he smiles and says, “Yeah, you got ‘em, boyo. Congrats.”

“What about Sam?”

“See for yourself,” Quorra tells him with a small grin, and steps out of the way.

Sam looks awful. His entire body is a mass of bruises, one of his legs is in a cast, and Chuck can see bandages covering the tell-tale signs of burns along his copilot’s arm. At his look, Quorra explains.

“His pod hadn’t cleared the blast quite as much as yours had when the bomb went off. The doctors say they haven’t spotted any brain trauma, so they think he’ll make a full recovery, though there’ll be some scarring and he’s going to be in a lot of pain for a while. They had to pin most of the bones of his lower leg, apparently.”

Instead of replying verbally, Chuck simply nods his head at the Iso’s explanation and reaches out towards Sam’s bed, eyes not leaving the other man. Quorra, seeming to know what he’s asking for, rearranges the brunet’s arm until Chuck can link their hands together with protesting fingers. He can see red lines in the shape of their suit’s circuitry running over his copilot’s knuckles. Once he has Sam’s hand in his own, the nerves that had been gripping his spine abate, and the Australian lets out a long breath before turning back to Herc and Scott.

“What about Yancy and Raleigh? Did they…?”

“They both made it,” Herc answers. “Both are pretty okay, all things considered. They wanted to stay here and wait for you two to wake up, but,” a shrug, “they both needed sleep, so we sent them back to their quarters to rest.”

That gets a frown out of Chuck, and he, for the first time, notices the dark circles under the elder Hansens’ eyes.

“Well, you two should go join ‘em, then,” he says, trying to sound annoyed but not really succeeding when his throat feels like it’s on fire, his words coming out strained. “You two need rest, too, so get it. Besides, I’m sure your little puppies aren’t sleeping without you two idiots there, anyway.”

He ignores the looks they both send him, instead turning his head so that he’s facing Sam again, their hands now propped on the edge of the older man’s bed, and closes his eyes once more.

  

——

 

Somehow, despite the fact that Chuck and Sam are the only ones to have actually exchanged rings already, it’s Scott, Herc, Raleigh, and Yancy that all get married first. Quorra and Mako follow them, several months later.

Sam starts sending Chuck expectant looks after that, until one day the Australian snaps, telling his boyfriend— _fiancé_ , he still has to constantly remind himself—that he’s not bleeding ready yet. He’d said yes, it _will_ happen, do they really have to rush it?

The brunet just smiles at him in that infuriatingly patient way of his and lays a kiss on the corner of Chuck’s mouth. He doesn’t say anything, but the looks stop after that.

  

——

 

On the day Sam and Chuck finally say their vows, Chuck nearly passes out at the altar. And not from anything like nerves or embarrassment. No, the thing that freezes the air in his lungs and makes him see black spots at the edge of his vision as he fights to draw a breath are the rings.

“They’re from the wreckage of Striker,” Sam explains softly as he slips it onto Chuck’s hand. “I figured that, since we started with her, and since she’s, in her own way, a part of us, that it would be appropriate.”

Chuck has to swallow several times before finding his voice, drawing in a ragged breath.

“And—and the line in the middle?” he asks, referring to the strip of metal that neatly bisects the halves of both rings, shifting in color from a deep green to a vivid blue depending on how it’s held to the light. Sam gets a faraway look on his face at Chuck’s words, but eventually answers, words so quiet that only they can hear.

“It’s from the A.I. quantum blue box. So we can always carry her around with us, both the Jaeger, and _her_.”

It looks perfect on Sam’s finger when Chuck guides it onto the circuitry-scarred digit.

  

——

 

Later, when he and Sam are much older, Chuck will tell their children, Angela and Kevin, that he’s crying when kissing his husband on their wedding day, not because he’s sad, but because it was one of the happiest moments of his life.

It’s not like it’s a lie.

“Of course,” Sam adds, kissing the two kids on top of their heads, “the _happiest_ moments were the two when we got you guys.”

“Damn right,” Chuck adds with a smile. Ignoring the way Sam frowns and whispers a harsh “ _Language_ ” at him, he leans over top of their children and plants a soft kiss on his husband’s lips, warmth rushing through him at the simple contact.

  

——

 

If he listens hard enough, Chuck can almost hear her.

He can hear her voice in the way they whisper “I love you” to each other.

He can hear her laughter in the little involuntary noises Sam makes when Chuck is deep inside of him.

Most of all, though, he can hear her last wish, her last sacrifice, in the way their hearts beat against each other, synchronized, as they lie next to one another at night, hands wound together, rings winking between green and blue in the moonlight.

**Author's Note:**

> The link is right there, too *points right below this note* if you wanna watch it again. I know I do.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Pacific Rim: Incalculable, Unconditional](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1786009) by [Sharvie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharvie/pseuds/Sharvie)




End file.
